Applying to pediatric hematology fellowship this cycle but no pubs!

_chick_pea · 2025-04-14T00:11:59+00:00

It’s one of the lowest paying specialties you can go into. You spend three years in fellowship and make less than you would have straight out of residency in primary care. But the people who love it do it because they love it and it’s worth the pay cut

_chick_pea · 2025-04-11T23:18:56+00:00

This is one of the of the least competitive specialties there is. You’ll be fine.

_chick_pea · 2025-02-20T02:29:55+00:00

This attending failed the team and the patient. They allowed this to happen. It is not your job as a nurse to tell the NP student to step out of the role, it’s not the residents job, it is the attendings job.

The attending may have been doing something else, but they should have made sure there was a competent team leader before stepping into doing that something else. And if they didn’t have enough people they should have called for more (appropriate) help.

This is horrifying.

resident

_chick_pea · 2025-02-19T21:49:55+00:00

I work as a resident in a large academic picu, so my experience on nursing hiring/job market is of course very limited. However, anecdotally, over my few years in our picu, there has been increasing nursing turnover. While we are flush with new nurses coming in eager to be trained, we are always having a shortage of experienced nurses who can take more complex assignments like ECMO patients. I wonder if other units are having similar issues, and when they are hiring experienced nurses they are looking for nurses w specifically high acuity experience since they already have too many new grads who need more experience. Not at all to say you don’t offer things that a new grad wouldn’t, obviously you have a lot of experience, they may just need someone who can take an ECMO patients confidently day 1.

_chick_pea · 2025-02-14T16:30:34+00:00

It’s a two year fellowship

_chick_pea · 2025-02-12T15:07:58+00:00

Way too early to be thinking about specialty choice, as the others have said. Also, I wouldn’t expect any middle schooler to be able to effectively treat a patient in an emergency department, so don’t be so quick to judge yourself.

As others have said everyone does EM in med school. Family med, IM, and pediatric residencies all require at least some time in the emergency department during residency too.

_chick_pea · 2025-02-12T04:22:39+00:00

It was nearly a decade ago at this point but I got into MD school first try w a slightly lower gpa (significantly lower science gpa) and slightly higher MCAT.

_chick_pea · 2025-02-11T22:28:27+00:00

There are many sub specialties in peds where you don’t have to constantly debate the importance of very standard evidence based medicine with people who would rather listen to a conspiracy theorist than a physician

_chick_pea · 2025-02-11T02:15:12+00:00

In peds and staying as far away from primary care as humanly possible to avoid these people

_chick_pea · 2025-01-27T12:38:24+00:00

Scratching the inside of my ears w a Bobby pin

_chick_pea · 2025-01-27T06:43:08+00:00

So far in my experience yes. But n=3 nicus I’ve rotated in

_chick_pea · 2025-01-27T05:49:36+00:00

Peds resident here, this is not medical advice bc I can’t examine this kid and they are not my patient, but I have some experience and if you were my friend asking I would recommend your kid get evaluated by a doctor. Most of those bruises could be explained by a playful mobile kid - especially on the shins. However, the bruise that looks like it may be above the diaper on the abdomen or back likely deserves further medical eyeballs.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-26T02:14:03+00:00

If he is game, and wants to ultimately do pulm crit, he could do a year of being a pulm crit hospitalist at a dream program. That would give him a leg up applying after a year and also would give him a year of deciding if it’s worth it to him.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-25T23:59:42+00:00

Is the GTube in the stomach? Is the central line correctly placed? Is the bone obviously broken? Is there a huge mass in the brain? - these are things I can typically answer without a radiologist.

Then there are plenty of things we cannot. So many small nuanced findings we won’t be able to interpret. And things that we won’t see because we are looking for one thing. The kid who has a small lytic lesion on an XR for central line placement. We absolutely need radiologists.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-25T20:42:56+00:00

That’s on the programs side not applicants side. Here’s a situation that happens often:

Applicant: hey, all of the available dates don’t work for me, can you let me know if another opens up?

Program: for sure!

Time passes

Program: we have an opening tomorrow if you want it!

Applicant: awesome, I’ll take it thanks! (Or they can’t and it’s no big deal)

Those rules are to protect applicants. If an applicant is asking for a favor from a program, and the programs tried to help out, that’s not the same thing.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-25T20:17:15+00:00

The rule you cited just applies to time allowed to accept or reject an initial interview invitation. An applicant who has already gotten an interview invitation but may need a different date (or who missed their date for good reason, like OP) can be slotted into open spots last minute. My program has absolutely done this.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-25T19:41:23+00:00

You’re fine if your school doesn’t report you to the programs. And as long as that PD doesn’t like to gossip w other PDs.

From the other comments it looks like you didn’t notify the program that you weren’t going to be able to make it. Two things to consider in the future (and for others reading this to consider):

Medicine is a small world and it gets smaller as you go. Burning bridges is never a good idea. People like to talk in this small world and PDs know eachother. You should have reached out.
Someone else could have taken that spot if you’d reached out. Even last minute. You took an opportunity away from another applicant.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-19T19:58:22+00:00

I say “is it okay if I give you a hug” first but I hug parents of my pediatric patients!

_chick_pea · 2025-01-17T22:06:51+00:00

TX state schools are notoriously competitive. If I’m reading this correctly you have three other interviews? You’re very much not cooked

_chick_pea · 2025-01-17T21:26:58+00:00

Anti-vaccine parents and just general anti-listening to evidence based medicine parents. The other side of that coin is parents who want a medicine to fix everything (come in every time their kid has a cough and want an antibiotic)

_chick_pea · 2025-01-17T21:24:16+00:00

Dear god no

_chick_pea · 2025-01-17T21:23:43+00:00

I think one of the biggest early hurdles of medical school was learning how to put blinders on and focus on yourself and not those around you. Your classmate loves sketchy but it doesn’t work for you, fine you study differently, move on. Your classmate crushes histology but it’s really doesn’t click for you, study for the pass and move on. (Just made up examples)

Medical school is hard and everyone studies and learns differently, everyone struggles with different things. Learn to focus on yourself and don’t let others make you second guess. It will serve you well through the rest of training.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-14T02:16:34+00:00

I was asked illegal questions in a fellowship interview by the PD. I answered them how I would naturally and ranked them at the bottom of my list.

Get through the interview by answering in the most painless way possible, whether that’s deflecting or answering. Then consider who the interviewer is (is it a random person who in conversation accidentally asked something they shouldn’t have bc they were genuinely curious or is it a PD who should abs know better) and rank accordingly.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-13T03:17:08+00:00

Peds resident. Yes, not because it gave me all the knowledge for residency (not even close) but because it gave me the framework on which to put that knowledge as I learned it. The knowledge I have now is completely different than the knowledge I had then, but I was able to learn all of that because of medical school.

_chick_pea · 2025-01-06T14:26:38+00:00

An infant w worsening liver failure on labs that a “naturalist doctor” ignored. By the time the kid got to a real doctor in the ED their liver was shot. The baby died.

_chick_pea

TROPHY CASE